Her mental
vision presented to her his image as he had walked about the horrid
little rooms, his somewhat stiffly held head not much below the
low ceilings. He had taken in shabby carpets, furniture, faded
walls, general dim dinginess.
"It's an unholy den for anything to spend its days in--that third
floor," he made the statement detachedly, in a way. "If she's six,
she has lived six years there--and known nothing else."
"All London top floors are like it," said Feather, "and they are
all nurseries and school rooms--where there are children."
His faintly smiling glance took in her girl-child slimness in its
glittering sheath--the zephyr scarf floating from the snow of her
bared loveliness--her delicate soft chin deliciously lifted as she
looked up at him.
"How would YOU like it?" he asked.
"But I am not a child," in pretty protest. "Children are--are
different!"
"You look like a child," he suddenly said, queerly--as if the
aspect of her caught him for an instant and made him absent-minded.
"Sometimes--a woman does. Not often."
She bloomed into a kind of delighted radiance.
"You don't often pay me compliments," she said. "That is a beautiful
one. Robin--makes it more beautiful."
"It isn't a compliment," he answered, still watching her in the
slightly absent manner. "It is--a tragic truth."
He passed his hand lightly across his eyes as if he swept something
away, and then both looked and spoke exactly as before.
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